Leslie Jones is bringing her stand-up act to downtown Nashville next month, with the Saturday Night Live alum set to perform at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's James K. Polk Theater on September 12. The show lands in the middle of her national “I'm Hot Tour,” which has already made stops across Kentucky, Michigan and Florida this year.
The Nashville date is being produced by Outback Presents, a live entertainment promoter founded in 1996 by Mike and Kathy Smardak that's headquartered right in Music City on 10th Avenue South. As reported by WZTV, the September 12 show will fill the 1,075-seat Polk Theater, a proscenium space with a semi-thrust pit and accessible seating positioned behind the orchestra level. Public ticket sales for the tour officially opened back in April, according to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
A Late Bloomer Who Became an SNL Legend
Jones is a comedian and actress best known for her work on Saturday Night Live, which she joined in 2014. She began that year as a staff writer before moving in front of the camera in October, becoming the oldest performer to debut as a cast member in the sketch show's history at age 47, according to a historical account from LateNighter. Her run on the show later earned her three Primetime Emmy Award nominations, in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Beyond SNL, Jones has built a wide-ranging résumé. She appeared alongside Eddie Murphy in Coming 2 America, a role that earned her an MTV Movie Award and a People's Choice Award nomination. She's also worked on the HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death, picking up nominations from the Writers Guild of America and NAACP along the way, and Time magazine once named her one of its 100 most influential people.
From Podcasts to Prime Time
Jones has kept a busy media footprint outside of touring, too. She co-hosts the podcast The F*ckry alongside comedian Lenny Marcus, and she served as the first guest host when The Daily Show launched its rotating guest-host format in January 2023. She also hosted ABC's reboot of Supermarket Sweep for two seasons starting in October 2020, per Wikipedia.
Her television resume expanded again this summer when she debuted as co-host of HGTV's home makeover series Roast My Rental in July, teaming with designer Jasmine Roth to overhaul short-term rental properties in just 72 hours. The four-episode series premiered across HGTV and discovery+, according to HGTV, arriving just weeks before Jones heads out on the road for the Nashville stop of her tour.
A Tennessee Homecoming at a Civic Landmark
The Polk Theater sits inside TPAC, a non-profit venue near the Tennessee State Capitol on Deaderick Street that opened in September 1980 following a public-private campaign led by local philanthropist Martha Rivers Ingram. The center hosts roughly 500 performances and 500,000 visitors a year across its three stages, according to GPSmyCity. While TPAC itself is state-owned, the “I'm Hot Tour” stop is an independently promoted commercial engagement staged at the venue rather than a TPAC production.
Jones has also built a following well beyond stand-up stages and television sets. Starting with the 2016 Rio Olympics and continuing through the 2024 Paris Games, her enthusiastic live commentary on Olympic events turned her into a social media phenomenon, leading NBC Sports to bring her on as an official contributor, according to FASHION Magazine. Her 2020 Netflix special Leslie Jones: Time Machine, directed by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, further cemented her crossover appeal, and her 2023 memoir Leslie F*cking Jones became a New York Times bestseller whose audiobook, co-narrated with Chris Rock, won the 2024 Audie Award for Humor.
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